After years on the drawing board, the verdict is in: Santa Clara's new, $230 million Family Justice Center is set to rise in the St. James Park area of downtown San Jose, and soon.

Court officials told me this week the massive, 234,000-square-foot, eight-story courthouse will break ground July 16. The site takes up nearly the entire block bounded by West St. James Street, North First Street, DeVine Street, and North Market Street. The momentum follows a successful March bond sale to finance the project's construction.

Project a survivor

Santa Clara's new courthouse survived even though other judicial capital projects throughout the state got placed on indefinite delays because of massive state funding reductions. A court spokeswoman said the state's Judicial Council determined the Santa Clara project was far enough along to warrant moving forward.

Still, the project saw a year-long delay because of a shift in the way the project was to be financed -- from predominantly county funds to state funds. State funding reductions also required adjusting the project to lower costs. And acquiring the site took longer than expected.

The Family Justice Center will be a include 20 courtrooms and consolidate operations currently spread among six different locations, Teresa Ruano, a spokeswoman for the Administrative Office of the Courts, told me. That includes family court, juvenile dependency court, drug and mental health court, child support, probate investigations and self-help.

"Right now, people are going from one facility to another," Ruano told me. Those facilities are often overcrowded and undersized. Replacing them with a modern home in one spot has been "a vision that this court has had for a long time," she said.

Space put on market

That means the court will vacate about 113,000 square feet of leased office space when the project opens. The largest footprint is at 191 N. First Street, where the court occupies about 44,700 square feet. The court will also leave the current Family Courthouse at 170 Park Ave., at the high-profile intersection of Park Avenue and Almaden Boulevard in Cityview Plaza, across from the Adobe campus. The court occupies the entire 30,000-square-foot building.

The project should be complete by the third quarter of 2015. Hensel Phelps Construction of San Jose is the construction manager. Zimmer Gunsul Frasca of Los Angeles is the project architect. It's expected to go out for subcontractor bidding in the next two weeks.